Panic Attacks Symptoms
A personal feels extreme anxiety during a panic attack, with sudden onset and crippling symptoms. Some of these people believe they are suffering or about to suffer a heart attack that may lead to death. Death rarely comes during a panic attack, despite the severity of the symptoms.
Panic attack symptoms can appear suddenly without any real cause. Its symptoms can be felt within the body as it reacts to an uncontrollable fear like pounding or racing heart, chest pains or difficulty breathing, stomach upset or nausea, dizziness, lightheadedness, tingling or numbness in the hands, hot flashes or chills. The symptoms can also be felt within the mind by experiencing a dreamlike sensation, the feeling of terror, a need to escape, the fear of loosing control or doing something embarrassing or the fear of dieing.
A key symptom of a panic disorder is the fear of having future panic attacks. Most people who have had one panic attack are likely to have others. The fear of experiencing an attack again can cause the person to avoid places and situations where an attack has occurred in the past or where they believe an attack may occur. They might develop a phobia about these situations.
Panic attacks are distinct from other forms of anxiety, because of the sudden and abrupt onset. This can happen without provocation and can be disabling. These attacks may be an underlying symptom of other anxiety disorders. Once an individual begins having patterns of anxiety and avoidance, a panic disorder is diagnosed.
Without treatment, panic disorders can cripple a person’s daily and social lives. Three million Americans, one out of every 60 adults, suffer from panic attacks at some point. For most sufferers, panic attacks are generally experienced starting between the ages of fifteen and twenty.
The disabling and shocking experience of a panic attack can last for several minutes, and its symptoms strongly resemble those of a heart attack. This leads sufferers of panic attacks to believe that the attack may kill them.
Panic attacks can take place while an individual is sleeping as well. These are nocturnal panic attacks but they occur far less often than panic attacks during the day. 40%-70% of individuals who suffer from daytime panic attacks will also suffer from nocturnal panic attacks. These attacks tend to cause sufferers to wake suddenly from sleep in a state of sudden anxiety through no apparent cause and can have all the other symptoms of a panic attack. Although nocturnal panic attacks tend to last less than 10 minutes, the time that it takes to fully calm down after such an experience can be much longer.
There are various symptoms that can occur in the sufferer of panic attacks. The physical afflictions experienced during a panic attack can vary from person to person, the mental state, however, is the same. The out of control feelings of fear are present for all panic attic and anxiety attack sufferers.
